World War I- The Cause Simplified
World War One - Cause Simplified
World War One remains one of the greatest disasters in human history, yet many people don’t fully understand what caused it, nor what came out of it. Yes, some may know of Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination, but not why such an act led to a continent tearing itself apart. This piece will attempt to explain the causations of the Great War as simply as possible.
At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a system was established known as, “The Concert of Europe”. This system was meant to prevent future wars by keeping all powers on the continent relatively balanced, so that no nation could go to war without great risk. However, the peace intended by this system was unravelled by two events, the first of which was the unbalancing of the carefully designed system put in place. While nations such as the Ottomans and Russia slowly lost power and rotted from the inside, other nations such as Britain were essentially unopposed. Furthermore, the unification of places such as Italy and especially Germany severely unbalanced the system - where there were once just dozens of smaller duchies, there were now two newly unified countries eager to expand, yet lacking the chance to take out this aggression in places such as Africa that had already been taken over by the other European colonial Empires. Another issue with the system was that it caused multiple nations to form nets of alliances, in order to avoid being attacked by other states that had their own alliances. Both of these led to a palpable air of tension on the continent, ready to erupt into war in an instant.
On the actual war itself; it began, as stated above, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo at the hands of the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. Because the Austrian government felt Princip may have been connected to the Serbian government (a controversy that continues to this day), they sent a list of demands to the Serbian government, which the latter would have to either accept or face war. However, because Austria wanted a war, they made these demands unacceptable to Serbia, and so when Serbia refused, Austria declared war.
From here, things begin to get complicated. Russia was allied with Serbia, and so declared war on Austria to regain prestige they had lost in the Russo-Japanese war of just a few years prior. Germany, who was allied with Austria, then declared war on Russia, who was allied with France. As such, France declared war on Germany, with the intent to regain the territory of Alsace-Lorraine that had been lost in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 - 1871. Germany, in order to bypass France’s defenses they had placed on their shared border, executed the Schlieffen Plan, which involved going through Belgium to invade France. Because Belgium was allied with Britain, this involved Britain into the war. Other combatants included Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (both of which wanted more influence in the Balkans) allied with Germany, and Montenegro (who was allied with Serbia), Japan, Italy, and Romania (each of which wanted territory from either Germany or Austria). Lastly, there was the United States, who likely entered as a result of the Zimmerman Telegram, which promised Mexico US territories lost in the Mexican-American War in exchange for aid against Britain. This resulted with the Central Powers led by Germany on one side, and the Entente led by Britain on the other.
